Blog of a course that allows students to learn how to use books, newspapers, magazines, journals, archives, databases, and the Internet to find and evaluate information on legendary creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other cryptids. It also encourages the developement of critical thinking skills to deal with extraordinary claims and ideas for thinking about them.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Sensationalism

I'm a bit frustrated with my research right now. I used three newspaper articles in adding content to Wikipedia, but I'm not convinced I did it right; all three articles were written within a handful of days of each other, and seemed only to be repeating what the others had said. Rather than new information being reported, it was repetition of the same, which inclines me to believe that they were simply trying to capitalize on the hype surrounding the Beast of Bont.

Then I went to YouTube, since I hadn't done that yet, and looked at videos about phantom cats. I found the information hard to take seriously because the presenters were definitely playing to peoples' fears, calling the endangered black leopard (assumed to be among the alien big cats sighted) a man-eater and that the UK government is being deliberately negligent when they ask for proof that phantom cats exist. I'd just finished looking at Wikipedia: there have been only two documented big cat attacks on people in the past forty years, so to claim that the government is being negligent is wildly out of proportion, particularly without proof.

That's the other thing I'm finding hard: the amount of evidence for phantom cats is pretty darn small, particularly when there have been sightings for forty years or more. Why hasn't someone managed to capture one?